newborns

Family in India noticed 'dead' baby moving in bag in a case of 'shocking criminal negligence'

(Newser) -
Police are on the case of an upscale New Delhi hospital for what the Times of India calls a "shocking case of negligence" after a premature newborn was declared dead, then later discovered by his parents to be alive on the way to his funeral. The BBC and the...
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Mayumi Saito confessed to decades-old crimes, say Japanese police

(Newser) -
A Japanese woman was arrested Tuesday after police say she confessed to putting four newborns in concrete-filled buckets two decades ago and having been filled with guilt over not caring for her babies. Human remains were identified via imaging in four buckets found in her condominium, an Osaka police official...
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Babies born on back-to-back days at same NJ restaurant

(Newser) -
Not every Burger King delivers—but that didn't stop two women from having their babies on back-to-back days in the parking lot of the same Burger King restaurant in New Jersey. Denville police say they were called to the restaurant at 7:24pm Friday for a woman going into...
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Savanna Greywind was last seen in apartment in Fargo, ND

(Newser) -
A newborn infant was found in a Fargo, North Dakota, apartment building Thursday where a missing pregnant woman was last seen, and police have arrested two people in connection with her disappearance. Per a Fargo PD Facebook post , an investigation "thus far indicates the probability" that the infant is...
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Is kangaroo care better for kids, or are parents who do it simply better parents?

(Newser) -
The age-old practice of mothers holding their naked newborns to their skin and nursing them appears to benefit children—specifically those who were born premature or small—two decades later. Researchers at the Kangaroo Foundation in Bogota, Colombia, revisited a group of preemies who were studied in the mid-1990s and...
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A roughly 12-pound weight gain increases risk for all adverse outcomes in newborns

(Newser) -
Not only the sins of the father, but the weight of the mother may well also be laid at the feet of the children. So report researchers out of Sweden in the journal PLoS Medicine in finding that women whose BMI increases by two or more units—amounting to a...
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Researchers use MRI scans to observe the impact a mother's voice has

(Newser) -
Newborns can pick out their mother's voice in their first days of life, and while the stimulating sound of mom's voice has long been connected to the early emotional and social development of children, little is understood neurologically. Now researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy ...
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But you might be imitating her

(Newser) -
Contradicting parenting websites and books—and probably a bunch of overly proud new parents—researchers have concluded that infants in the first weeks of life actually don't imitate facial expressions or hand gestures. In fact, the study suggests that it's the adults who are imitating the babies, reports...
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For 6 weeks, state will pay 55% of worker's paycheck, private companies 45%

(Newser) -
What do the United States and Papua New Guinea have in common? Per the International Labor Organization , they're the only two countries out of 185 that don't have national paid parental leave, the New York Times reports. To make up for that absence, some states—including Rhode Island,...
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Study finds it's the hours after birth when things tend to go wrong

(Newser) -
The majority of newborns with brain damage weren't born that way, meaning a medical mishap during their birth didn't cause the damage. Researchers at Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University Chicago report in the Journal of Perinatology that of the 32 full-term infants whose records they examined...
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A hospital visitor with an unknown oral herpes outbreak kissed the infant

(Newser) -
The mother of a newborn in the UK is taking to Facebook to warn how easy it is to expose babies to herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), which is the kind typically transmitted orally, and what caused her own infant to be put on a drip in the hospital as...
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The difference allows the female spine to adapt during pregnancy

(Newser) -
Boys and girls have subtly different spines, and the difference is present at birth, according to a new study out of Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on 35 full-term newborn girls and 35 full-term newborn boys, researchers report in the Journal of Pediatrics that vertebral...
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Researchers reconstruct how newborns see the world

(Newser) -
Researcher Svein Magnussen wondered 15 years ago whether newborns can make out people's facial expressions, but says he didn't yet have the tools to investigate. Now, thanks to modern simulation techniques, as well as a wealth of information from previous studies, the University of Oslo professor and other...
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Rep. Casey Cox says bill could curb child abandonment

(Newser) -
Newborn incubators, or baby boxes, could be showing up soon at Indiana hospitals, fire stations, churches, and selected nonprofits under legislation that would give mothers in crisis a way to surrender their children safely and anonymously. Indiana could be the first state to allow use of the baby boxes on...
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Shirley Irvin has been charged with assault and harassment, police say

(Newser) -
Family gatherings aren't always harmonious, even those involving great-grandmothers in hospital maternity wards. In an Aug. 31 incident in Brighton Township, Pa., now coming to light, the grandmother (Shirley Irvin) of a father-to-be apparently overheard the great-grandmother (Carole Alberts) of the mother-to-be say something about hoping the twin babies...
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Rate slows down after initial burst in early weeks

(Newser) -
The first study of its kind shows that newborns' brains grow fast—figure a staggering 1% a day immediately after birth, though it slows to about half that rate by the end of three months. Using MRI scans of 87 newborns' brains, researchers discovered that the first weeks of life...
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Study shows that mothers' brains light up with pleasure at the scent

(Newser) -
The smell of a newborn isn't just a pleasant sensation for moms—it might be closer to an addiction, a new study suggests. Montreal researchers found that when women who had given birth recently smelled an infants' pajamas, their brains' reward circuits lit up, reports LiveScience . The dopamine surge...
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Along with obesity, birthweight is on the rise

(Newser) -
Like people, babies are getting bigger around the world—and experts say those cute, chubby newborns pose health risks to themselves and their moms, NBC News reports. Not only can they get stuck during birth, but they can face higher risks of cancer, obesity, and (if born from an overweight...
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Today's drugs good at stopping transmission, but not eliminating infection

(Newser) -
Don't get too excited by last week's news of a baby in Mississippi being "cured" of HIV , warns Mark Siedner in the Wall Street Journal —just because the baby had been exposed to HIV does not mean she was really infected with the virus. Most likely,...
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But advocates say they save lives

(Newser) -
Mothers across Europe can abandon newborn babies in a so-called "baby box"—incubators located discreetly outside some hospitals. But one UN committee is lobbying to overturn the practice, saying the boxes ultimately hurt children and avoid dealing with the deeper causes of child abandonment, the AP reports. "...
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